Ed McBain - Like Love

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing. He’s gone, there’s nothing, he’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Nobody. Everybody. Oh! Oh!” She put one hand to her face suddenly and began weeping into it. With the other hand, she clung to the building, swaying. Carella leaned further out of the window, and she turned to him sharply and shouted, “Don’t come near me!”

“I wasn’t…”

“Don’t come out here!”

“Look, take it easy. I wouldn’t come out there if you gave me a million dollars.”

“All right. Stay where you are. If you come near me, I’ll jump.”

“Yeah, and who’s gonna care if you do, Blanche?”

“What?”

“If you jump, if you die, you think anyone’ll care?”

“No, I… I know that. No one’ll care. I… I’m not worried about that.”

“You’ll be a two-line blurb on page four, and then nothing. Nothing lasts a long time.

“I don’t care, Oh, please, won’t you please leave me alone? Can’t you understand?”

“No, I can’t. I wish you’d explain it to me.”

The girl swallowed and nodded, and then turned to him and slowly and patiently said, “He’s gone, do you see?”

“Who’s gone?”

“Does it matter? He. A man. And he’s gone. Goodbye, Blanche, it’s been fun. That’s all. Fun. And I…” Her eyes suddenly flared. “Damn you, I don’t want to live! I don’t want to live without him!”

“There are other men.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. I loved him. I love him. I don’t want any other men. I want…”

“Come on in,” Carella said. “We’ll have a cup of coffee, and we’ll try to…”

“No.”

“Come on, come on. You’re not going to jump off that damn ledge. You’re just wasting everybody’s time. Now, come on.”

“I’m going to jump.

“Sure, but not right now, huh? Some other time. Next week maybe, next year. But we’re very busy today. The kids are turning on fire hydrants all over the city. Spring is here, Blanche. Do me a favor and jump some other time, okay?”

“Go to hell,” she said, and then looked dawn to the street.

“Blanche?”

She did not answer.

“Blanche?” Carella sighed and turned to Parker. He whispered something in Parker’s ear, and Parker nodded and left the window.

“You remind me a little of my wife,” Carella said to the girl. She did not answer. “Really, my wife. Teddy. She’s a deaf-mute. She…”

“A what?”

“A mute. Born deaf and dumb.” Carella smiled. “You think you’ve got problems? How’d you like to be deaf and dumb and married to a cop besides?”

“Is she really… deaf and dumb?”

“Sure.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She never even thinks of throwing herself off a building.”

“I… I wasn’t going to do it this way,’’ the girl said. “I was going to take sleeping pills. That’s why I put on the nightgown. But… I wasn’t sure I had enough. I had only half a bottle. Would that have been enough?”

“Enough to make you sick,” Carella said. “Come on in, Blanche. I’ll tell you all about the time I almost slashed my wrists.”

“You never did.”

“I almost did, I swear to God. Look, everybody feels like hell every once in a while. What happened? Did you get your period today?”

“Wh… ? How… how did you know?”

“I figured. Come on.”

“No.”

“Come on, Blanche.”

“No! Stay away from me!”

From inside the apartment, there came the sudden shrill ring of a telephone. The sound was clearly heard by the girl. She turned her head for a moment, and then closed her mind to the ringing phone. Carella pretended surprise. He had sent Parker downstairs to call the girl’s number, but now he pretended the ringing was unexpected. Quietly, he said, “Your phone’s ringing.”

“I’m not home.”

“It might be important.”

“It isn’t.”

“It might be… him.”

“He’s in California. It’s not him. I don’t care who it is.” She paused. Again, she said, “He’s in California.”

“They have phones in California, you know,” Carella said.

“It’s… it’s not him.”

“Why don’t you answer it and find out?”

“I know it isn’t him! Leave me alone!”

“You want us to answer this?” someone in the apartment shouted.

“She’s coming,” Carella said. He extended his hand to the girl. The telephone kept ringing behind him. “Take my hand, Blanche,” he said.

“No. I’m going to jump.”

“You’re not going to jump. You’re going to come inside and answer your telephone.

“No! I said no!”

“Come on, you’re getting me sore,” Carella shouted. “Are you just a stupid broad, is that what you are? You want to squash your brains on that sidewalk? It’s made of cement, Blanche! That’s not a mattress down there.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to jump.”

“So jump, for Christ’s sake!” Carella said angrily, using the tone of a father whose patience has finally been exhausted. “If you’re going to jump, go ahead. Then we can all go home. Go ahead.”

“I will,” she said.

“So go ahead. Either jump, or take my hand. We’re wasting time here.”

Behind him, the phone kept ringing furiously. There was no sound in the apartment, no sound on the face of the building except for the ringing of the telephone and the sighing of the wind.

“I will,” the girl said softly.

“Here,” Carella said. “Here’s my hand. Take it.”

For a speechless, shocking moment, he didn’t realize quite what was happening. And then his eyes opened wide, and he stood stock-still at the window, his hand extended, his hand frozen in space as the girl suddenly shoved herself away from the wall and leaped.

He heard her scream, heard it trailing all the way down the twelve stories to the street below, drowning out the frenzied ringing of the telephone. And then he heard the sound of her body striking the pavement, and he turned blindly from the window and said to no one, “Jesus, she did it.”

* * * *

The salesman was going to be a dead man within the next five minutes.

Some twenty blocks away from where Blanche leaped to her death, he entered a street flirting with Spring, carrying a heavy sample case in one hand, and attributing gender to the vernal equinox. To the salesman, Spring was a woman who had come dancing in over the River Harb, flitting past flotsam and jetsam, those two old-time vaudeville performers, showing her legs to the passing, hooting tugs, winking lewdly at the condoms floating on the river’s edge, flashing fleshy thighs to Silvermine Road and the park, and then airily leaping over the tenement rooftops to land gracefully in the middle of the street. The people had come outdoors to greet her. They wore smiles and flowered house dresses, smiles and open-throat sports shirts, smiles and sneakers and T shirts and shorts. Grinning, they took Spring into their arms and held her close and kissed her throat, where you been all this time, baby?

The salesman didn’t know he was going to be a dead man, of course. If he’d known, he probably wouldn’t have been spending his last few minutes on earth carrying a heavy sample case full of hairbrushes down a city street making love to Spring. If he’d known he was about to die, he might have saluted or something. Or, at the very least, be might have thrown his sample case into the air and gone to Bora Bora. Ever since he’d read Hawaii, he had gone to Bora Bora often. Sometimes, when selling hairbrushes got particularly rough, he went to Bora Bora as often as ten or twelve times a day. Once he got to Bora Bora, he made love to dusky-skinned fifteen-year-old maidens. There were a few dusky-skinned fifteen-year-old maidens on the street today, but not very many. Besides, he didn’t know he was going to die.